Roses & Ruin

Chapter 25 (Lexi)

        I was belly down resting on my elbows while I lay naked in Anthony's bed. He was rolled on his side using his rough hand to run up and down my bare back as we talked. For once there was no rush for one of us to have to leave. It was the first time I had sex and enjoyed the after.

With my limited sexual experience I know my circumstances with Anthony are more than untraditional. But now I was experiencing the real thing.

The sex, the laying in bed wrapped around each other in the aftermath, the talking. I don't know how to feel about it. I do know what I am feeling about it. I like it. But I don't know how I should feel about it because I know I probably shouldn't get used to this.

        The more I think about Vitaly and my brothers coming, the more I try to fix my courage so I can stand up to them when they inevitably involve me in their business. I don't want what they want and I shouldn't have to do as they say.

When I was a teenager I was in a vulnerable place when my mother died and I was suddenly in the hands of a stranger who only carried the word 'father' in name.

I was young, I had just lost my only parent, and I was now suddenly moving to a different country with these intimidating Russian men. My brother's were men by the time I met them. Or re-meet them. I barely remembered them from before. 

'Before', being when my mother escaped my father, escaped Russia, to give me a better life.

        I'd like to think that's why I was so complacent when Vitaly started enforcing all these rules upon me. How he started grooming me to be a part of the family business. I only had one role to play for those men...and it was to be a bargaining chip for gaining whatever it is they want in America. I was afraid to say no because I had nothing and no one.

But I started growing up. I started looking into a career for myself when I was approached by an agency to model in Russia. I think Vitaly only agreed to the modeling thing because it made me sound more appealing. Showing off to his business associates that he had a daughter who was a successful model.

Men want what they think everyone else wants, so they can have it for themselves and feel self important for it.

        But now? I'm 20 years old. I do have a career. I'm not very rich, but I'm also not very high maintenance. And now there is a guy. I've taken my sexuality into my own hands and went against Vitaly's biggest rule he'd enforced upon me. Stay pure, stay virgin.

I look down at this handsome sharp man beside me on this mattress and I think about how powerful I feel when he's lost in my limbs groaning in the pleasure that I give him. I don't think I wanna give that up just yet.

I'd gone to that women's rally and I saw resistance in its truest form, and I think I can do it. I think I can say no to Vitaly and my brothers.

        I almost wish, for once, that I could tell Anthony about my struggles. For some reason I feel like he'd want to help me, but that would be a grave mistake. My father is a dangerous man and Anthony couldn't even know the half of it. He wouldn't know what he's signing up for if he thought he'd wanna help me get out from under Vitaly's hold. From Boris's watchful suffocating eye. But something about Anthony has always felt a little dangerous too.

Maybe it's what drew my interest in him. That he didn't seem like just a businessman. He had this smooth suave demeanor, and yet he had bruised knuckles when I met him. I knew about the fight he'd gotten into not long ago and I wondered about him.

Assertive Anthony, that sounds hotter than it should. Can Anthony hold his own against a powerful man? Against a dangerous man?

       "Lexi?" My name dragged me out of my own headspace and brought me back to the bed I still laid in. Anthony was shirtless with only the thin sheet covering up to his waistline. He looked good. He looked more than good. He's firm in all the best places and he's defined with hard lines of muscle I wanna touch every second of every day.